The present invention relates generally to the field of poultry processing and, in its most preferred embodiments, to the field of apparatus and methods for deboning poultry.
Today, poultry products comprise an ever-growing portion of the diet consumed by humans and animals around the world. This growth and the resulting increased demand for poultry products has strained the production capacity of many poultry processing plants. To cope with the limited capacity of their processing facilities and ever-increasing costs, plant owners are searching for new technology that increases production capacity while keeping capital and operating costs at or below current levels.
Poultry products are delivered to the consumer market for human consumption in a variety of popular forms, including, but certainly not limited to, breasts, wings, thighs, legs, and nuggets. These products may originate from a variety of different birds, but more often than not, from chickens or turkeys. To generate such products, a typical poultry processing plant passes a bird through two major processes followed, in turn, by a number of specialized secondary operations. In the first major process, the bird is gutted leaving a carcass consisting of the skeletal structure and the outer portions of the bird. Then, in the second major process, known as deboning, the breasts, wings, thighs, legs, and tenders are removed from the outer portion of the bird.
Deboning is currently accomplished in most poultry processing plants by use of a stainless steel, continuous, deboning-conveyor having a series of vertical posts and deboning horns along its entire length. A second, wider, belt-type, continuous, products-conveyor is positioned alongside and at the same level as the first conveyor. The deboning process begins with a bird carcass being placed over each deboning horn at one end of the deboning-conveyor. As this conveyor transports the carcass toward its other end, the breasts, wings, thighs, legs, and tenders are cut away and removed from the carcass by numerous workers standing on the "free" side of the conveyor. Once removed, the bird portions are placed on the products-conveyor which transports the portions to another location in the plant for specialized, secondary operations. The removal of bird portions continues in this fashion along the length of the deboning-conveyor. By the time the bird carcass reaches the other end of the conveyor, only the skeleton remains and it is knocked off its deboning horn for grinding into meal to be used in animal feed. This apparatus and method form a system that is considered to be conventional by the industry and is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,385,419 issued to Cantrell.
While conventional systems have increased production throughout the poultry processing industry, there are, however, a number of problems with them. First, the deboning-conveyor can be worked from only one side because the location and size of the products-conveyor precludes access from the opposite side. However, this problem would exist even if the products-conveyor were eliminated or decreased in size because conventional systems are designed to allow workers to access only one bird carcass at at time. More specifically, in a convention system, bird carcasses are transported by mounting posts located in the center of the deboning-conveyor. Workers stand along one side of the deboning-conveyor while the carcasses pass before the workers in "single-file" fashion. Since it would be very dangerous to have two workers (one on each side of the deboning-conveyor) cutting on the same bird carcass, processing could never be done simultaneously from two sides of a conventional system.
Another problem with conventional systems is that a significant amount of floorspace is required to process each bird. Conventional systems require floorspace for a deboning-conveyor, an adjacent products-conveyor, and worker access to one side of the deboning-conveyor. Furthermore, because secondary processing to remove bones and cartilage from thighs and legs is done off-line in a conventional system, additional floorspace is required for the secondary processing equipment, conveyors, and workers.
The effects of these problems combine to adversely affect a plant's overall cost of production. The one-sided nature of a conventional deboning system limits its production capacity per square foot of floorspace and often forces the owners of a processing plant to install multiple deboning systems to achieve a desired level of production. The cost of this additional equipment and floorspace necessary to house it serve to increase a plant's overall cost of production. Of course, other costs are also incurred due to operation and maintenance expenses associated with the additional equipment and floorspace. As if these costs did not increase the cost of production enough, the off-line, secondary processing of thighs and legs required by a conventional system contributes its own share of costs for floorspace, equipment, operation, and maintenance.
Several other problems with conventional deboning systems arise because the straight posts and deboning horns are located in the center of the conveyor and workers must reach out over the conveyor hour after hour to cut and remove portions of a bird. In doing so, the workers may strain their backs and risk more serious injury that may result from getting a finger or clothing caught in the links of the deboning-conveyor. In addition, the centerline location of the deboning horns causes the wrists and forearms of the workers to be subjected repeatedly to non-natural motions and angles as they reach out to cut and remove portions from bird carcasses. As a result, some workers have developed carpal tunnel syndrome and have been forced to miss time from work.
The present invention was developed to solve or mitigate the problems discussed above and may additionally solve or mitigate other problems that become apparent upon reading and understanding this specification.